I've been hearing from a intending user of OpenOffice who was
repeatedly finding the hashes on his downloads did not match. He (I
think he was a "he") had repeatedly downloaded form different mirrors
but could not get a match. He even, he says, tried other versions and
other operating systems. Clearly there was something wrong at his
end. Can you guess yet?
He solved the problem by himself. Instead of comparing the hash
derived from the downloaded file with the *content* of the
corresponding hash file, he had been seeking a match with the hash
derived from that hash file. Now you and I might find that an
unlikely course of action, but how is someone taking it to realise his mistake?
I've been looking at
http://www.openoffice.org/download/checksums.html . It gives
instructions such as "If both hash values do not match" and "When
both hash values match", though it does also say "Paste the hash from
the SHA256 / MD5 file you have downloaded. First you have to open it
and copy the hash value" and "Now compare the hash generated by
OpenSSL with the value in the file".
For the benefit of naive users - who may well not have been
encouraged to use such techniques before - are there enough clues on
this web page to assist anyone making this error?
Brian Barker
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